Best Radeon Graphics Cards for Gaming 2011 – 2012

This post is dedicated to the best rated and top selling Radeon graphics cards of 2011 – 2012. nVidia GeForce fans look away for a moment, we’ll be reviewing the best nVidia cards in the next few days. Order is based upon sales, customer reviews, ratings, and value for each price point rather than which card simply has the most dedicated memory.

Best Radeon Graphics Cards for 2011 – 2012

Sapphire has been making video cards for years that gamers value for both their performance and durability. The HD6970 comes with AMD’s eyefinity technology which allows support for up to 3 screens. If you’ve never seen the difference between playing on a single screen vs. triple, you’ll be amazed at how much you can see with your peripheral vision. You also get 1536 stream processors and 2GB of DDR5 dedicated memory – plenty for running the latest games on high resolution settings. AMD HD3D Technology gives you 3D gaming and movie support to take your entertainment experience to the next level. Another key feature to the HD 6900 series from Radeon is the AMD powertune technology which automatically adjusts your graphics card power draw in order to give you increased performance. An alternative in this price range would be to crossfire 2 HD 6850s.

Overall: Overall you get great value with the HD 6970 and while it has come out that updating the Bios from the HD6950 is possible this is still one of the best GPU options available for those that don’t want to void their warranty or tweak their graphics card.

For those looking for a great gaming graphics card with lots of cooling MSI’s R6950 TWIN Frozr offers 20% more airflow than most GPU. It’s a fact that cooler hardware not only performs better, but lasts longer as well. The secret to the R6950 is the dual fan cooling which makes the GPU 11℃ cooler and 13.9dB quieter than reference HD 6950.

The R6950 uses Radeon’s Afterburner technology which allows the graphics card to boost performance in real time. Like the HD 6970 the R6950 has eyefinity technology for multi-monitor streaming play.

Overall: This is a great value play, after all, if you are willing to take a little bit of a chance you can update the bios for an inexpensive HD6970. The cooling options are great as well.

On sale this HIS version of the HD6950 is a great deal right now for around $40 cheaper than the R6950 (6/30/2011) and while it doesn’t have the dual fans, the $40 off sale makes it too tempting to pass up.

Overall: At this price point it’s hard not to look the direction of the HIS Radeon HD 6950 which gives you a lot more performance for only $50. Still, the dual DVI HDMI with eyefinity design is attractive for gamer’s looking for a flexible mid-level card.

Summary: We hope you’ve enjoyed this review of the Best Radeon Graphics Card for gaming in 2011. While we try to update our posts regularly the GPU market is constantly changing. Be sure to check our updated date at the bottom to make sure these picks are up-to-date.

Updated: 1/10/2012

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